Erotica [PA] - Madonna (CD 1992)

Children, cover your ears. The Demon's about to talk about sex.

Although it's safe to say that the American public has loosened up greatly over the past fifteen years or so, any discussion of sex is going to cause it's share of red faces and giggles. When someone, whether it's your friend in a drunken moment of exhibition or a celebrity who believes that their words carry more value than they do, talks freely about sex, they're looked at as freaks, wh*res, abnormalities.

By the time "Erotica", Madonna's sixth studio album, arrived in 1992, a lot of folks already knew WAY too much about the pop diva's sex life. While songs like "Like a Virgin" and "Papa Don't Preach" had already cemented Madonna's rep as a bit of a wild cowboy, this image was cemented by several events that occurred almost simultaneously-her role as a nymphomaniac defendant in "Body of Evidence" (a movie I'm ashamed to admit I saw), her vaguely pornographic coffee-table book "Sex" (a book I'm afraid to say I've thumbed through), and the album I'm reviewing right now (a record I'm af...oh, never mind. Just read the rest of the review).

Personally, I think folks who are sexually free have got the right idea. Many of us are far too repressed to truly enjoy what others will call smut or to let ourselves go with the wild abandon of a great encounter. I think this is where Madonna intended to go with this album. However, "Erotica" finds Madonna being vulgar for the sake of vulgarity. It sounds like an intentional button-pushing, and the music, not to mention Madonna's vocals, sound cool and detached. They lack the warmth of truly sexy albums like Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" or Janet Jackson's "janet".

Madonna certainly deserves a gold star for being at the forefront of dance music trends, and this album falls in line with where urban dance music was headed in the early Nineties. The bass throbs through the entire album-it's hard to think of a pop record in which it's so prominent. The album straddles various sounds that were beginning to flower-there are echoes of classic house, a few forays into the "acid jazz" sound, and plenty of backdrops strongly reminiscent of hip-hop.

While the album is sonically adventurous, it is also lyrically underwhelming. While the title track (a heat-deficient reiteration of her 1990 hit "Justify My Love") is a bass-heavy funk thumper, Madonna's murmured lyrics (spoken, not sung) are silly and boring. "My name is Dita, I'll be your mistress tonight," she rasps in what might be the least sexy voice ever. She delves further into spoken-word nonsense on the droning "Where Life Begins" (a song that celebrates um...the act of eating out-and I'm not talking about The Sizzler) and the attitude-laden "Waiting", a bumpy funk number that happens to contain the classic one-liner "next time you want some pu##y, just look in the mirror, darling".

Madonna returns to a more pop-centric dance sound (and singing, thank goodness) on the hit "Deeper & Deeper", which contains her strongest vocals and a nifty mariachi-band-meets-house breakdown in the bridge. It's Madonna-by-numbers, but the track proves why Madonna's the most revered dance artist of all time. The homewrecker-baiting "Thief of Hearts" proves that Madonna may have OD'ed on one too many drag balls, but it's still a fun romp. An update of Peggy Lee's "Fever" with a C&C Music Factory-esque post-disco beat is pleasant, but boring.

"Rain" and "Bad Girl" are the album's two best tracks. "Bad Girl" is a slinky, detached ballad that paints the singer as a melancholy figure ("Smoke too many cigarettes a day/I'm not happy when I act this way"), while "Rain" is a simply beautiful midtempo number with exquisite harmony vocals and a cleansing feel to it. Unfortunately, when Madge turns the tempo all the way down on the three-hanky weepfest "In This Life", the result is a tremendously sappy ballad.

Many critics have called "Erotica" underrated, particularly in light of the album's comparatively lukewarm commercial reception. It, at the time, was the lowest seller of her career, and was her only album at that point to not generate a #1 single. I say it's the worst album of the first two decades of her career (her most recent two albums have been stunningly mediocre, and I doubt she will ever recover). The dance beats are state of the art and fresh (for it's time, anyway), but everything sounds so mechanical and cold. Madonna's music, up to that point, had a freewheeling, fun vibe to it and Madonna didn't sound like she was enjoying herself one bit on this album.

Let's face it, not many things are worse than empty, boring, emotionless sex. Unless maybe you want to count the gross picture of Madonna sucking on some dude's big toe on the back cover.

"Erotica" by Madonna
Released 1992 on Maverick/Sire Records
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

More Madonna:

Madonna-The First Album
Like A Virgin
The Immaculate Collection
Bedtime Stories
GHV2
American Life
Confessions On A Dance Floor